Striped like tigers
by EasyThereGenius
Summary: His eyes return to hers and she fancies in a jolting moment that they are orange too, and inhuman and hungry. He has pushed his face even closer, and she finds with an ache that she misses his curling, pre-Raphaelite hair almost most of all.


**STRIPED LIKE TIGERS**

**Author's Note: No. Not SGU. Sorry. But more of that will be forthcoming. For now, I can't get enough, it seems, of tiger!Doctor. Kate Orman, this one's plainly in your wonderful novel's field (see **_**The Year of Intelligent Tigers**_**, if you haven't. No, really. Buy it now. Buy ten copies. Give them to Eight-obsessed friends). For background, the Doctor has taken up in a civil war between a colony of human musicians and a population of sentient tigers. At the point this story picks up, the Doctor is living with the tigers, learning what their agenda is. He's "gone native" and perhaps a little too literally. **

**A slightly different view of Anji and Grieve's meeting with the Doctor and the tigers in the wilds on Hitchemus, because I loved the scene and wanted more. The Doctor wasn't human anyway. It's easy to forget.**

**(Now all I have to do is fit cheetah!Master in here somewhere)**

* * *

"_How much simpler if men were not striped like tigers, patched like clowns;…_

…_If people were, even at times, consistent wholes;…"_

- ASJ Tessimond

* * *

_don't turn into a tiger you bastard_

The tree branches tangle the sky above them into a cat's cradle of black against darkening red, light shining bloodily from the shark-fin structures of the artefact. There must be a storm coming. The smell of ozone in the air is overpowering and sharp, but sharper still is the scent rolling off the tigers all around.

The smell rolls off him, too.

His face is inches from hers, and as she exhales in a short, reflexive gasp, he tilts his head slowly in a tiny, curious motion. Interested. Out of the corners of her eyes she can see the constant movements of the tigers as they gather. The striped patterns of tails and flanks pass back and forth in her peripheral vision, making her want to constantly move her head, trying to keep track of them.

She doesn't. She doesn't want to take her gaze from his. His eyes hold hers in what she can't help but feel is a form of challenge, and she daren't look away.

_Oh, you bastard_, she thinks helplessly, but still can't decide in the duration of that moment whether he's a poor bastard or a selfish bastard, even with Grieve's ravaged body lying just behind.

A small, low sound builds and grows in the air between them, like the throttling hum of a small motor-boat engine in the distance. It takes her a moment to realise it's him. He has pushed his face even closer, and she finds with an ache that she misses his curling, pre-Raphaelite hair almost most of all. Shorn, his face looks younger, his eyes larger, his jaw heavier.

"Doctor," she says, and her voice comes out as a tiny whisper.

_You're not one of them, _she wants to say. _You're not. You're the Doctor and things are falling apart and I don't want one of those things to be you. _

Except that seeing him here, smelling the alien feline reek of him, hearing the soft almost-not-there sounds of huge paws in the long grass all around - she's no longer sure.

The _hrhuh-hruh-hruhh _rumbles in his throat and she understands then that the sound is tied into his inhalation: he's sniffing. His lips are slightly parted, drawing the air in and running it over the Jacobson's organ he doesn't _(does he?) _have. Around the two of them, caught together staring at each other among the scattered rocks, the tigers press ever closer. One of them growls a short, liquid phrase _(questioning? Impatient?) _and the Doctor snaps his head round, snarls in return. The tiger doesn't press the point, but it doesn't back off, either. Anji flinches. They're so big. Any one of them could take her head off with one paw, enclose her throat in rows on rows of teeth by barely gaping. The Doctor has bites on his arms. Some are brand new, barely crusted over. His blood looks orange. She has a tiny slivered moment of hope that he's here under duress, that he's not one of them at all.

It's a tiny outpost of hope, and soon vanquished.

His eyes return to hers and she fancies in a jolting moment that they are orange too, and inhuman and hungry. But it's only the red in the sky, reflecting back at her, and perhaps the reflected pelts of the huge alien cats as they pace back and forth. Orange pollen dusted all over him like spice. His own teeth, hidden again behind the familiar lips as his snarl drops, seem brighter and whiter than usual.

_all the better to eat you with_

But after all, his eyes have always been inhuman. Haven't they?

"Anji," he says, scratchily. A tiger's odd pelt just grazes the backs of her legs at that moment and she stifles a yelp of shock. There's a huffing murmur from the others that she suspects is laughter, and the soft rattle of little pebbles displaced by paws as they continue to move around her.

_don't turn into a tiger_

" - Doctor," she says again, afraid of death, and afraid more that she knows what his answer is going to be. "I was going to ask you to come back with me."

"This matters too much," he says, and she wants to cry. The pollen that covers him will stripe her cheeks with dark orange lines. But she doesn't. The cold passion of his words hits her like a drench of water. So removed. The intellectual intensity which passes for emotion but is no more human than the beasts at her back. Grieve is dead. With one word from the Doctor, these tigers will kill her too. Because it's so important to him, this world, this lost civilization, this teaching of tigers. More important than her, and Fitz, and Karl. She'd actually thought he cared about Karl.

_you bastard_

It doesn't occur to her immediately that it's one word from him that's keeping them _back_. She feels the hopelessness of her situation well up inside her throat. What makes travelling with the Doctor bearable is the Doctor. And now he's right in front of her, but he isn't there.

She should say more. Tell him what she thinks of him. Tell him how unfair this all is. Tell him how many more people are going to die.

But instead, she closes her eyes, very deliberately. Tilts her head back, exposing her throat. Very well, then. Death it is. She can hear the footfalls and murmurs of the tigers. She almost shrieks when she feels breath on her neck, the feather touch of short hairs, the graze of teeth. Tiger scent and pollen invade her senses.

"Just trust me," says the Doctor's voice, harsh with growling, painful with sincerity, and so close. It's his teeth at her throat and his cropped hair brushing her face. She opens her eyes to the sight of him, feels without needing to move the intent scrutiny of the dozen beasts surrounding them.

The Doctor has her by the throat, not to eat or kill, but to hold: like the tigress grabs her cub and keeps it from the terrors of the big wide world. She feels like that cub, small, unimportant, an impediment to the huge inhuman force holding her in its grip.

And just like that, she breaks, backs away, jostling the backs and flanks of the tigers and not caring, feeling and hearing the clip of his teeth as he simply lets go. The long grass catches at her clothes, but that's all. They aren't coming. She's going to live. Behind her, she hears him growl.

_don't turn into a tiger you bastard_

Too late.

_Perhaps_, she thinks, as she numbly heads back to the city, _it was always too late. _


End file.
